Outside, voices murmured in the hall; not all the guests had dispersed. I caught muffled phrases—“quite burnt up, nothing left but the bones,” “… stolen? Don’t know …” “… check the stables,” “Yes, completely burned …” A deep shiver struck me, and I gripped Duncan’s hand hard, fighting a panic that I did not understand. I must have looked odd, for Bree said softly, “Mama?” She was looking at me, brow creased with worry. I tried to smile at her, but my lips felt stiff.
Jamie’s hands settled on my shoulders, large and warm. I had been holding my breath without realizing it; at his touch, I let it out in a small gasp, and breathed again. Major MacDonald glanced curiously at me, but his attention was at once deflected by Jocasta, who opened her eyes and turned her face in his direction.
“It is Major MacDonald, is it not?”
“At your service, Mum.” The Major made an automatic bow, forgetting—as folk often did—that she could not see him.
“I thank ye for your gallant service, Major. My husband and I are most indebted to ye.”
The Major made a politely dismissive sound.
“No, no,” she insisted, straightening up and brushing back her hair with one hand. “Ye’ve been put to great trouble on our account, and we must not impose further on your kindness. Ulysses—take the Major down to the parlor and find him proper refreshment.”
The butler bowed obsequiously—I noticed for the first time that he was dressed in a nightshirt over unbuckled breeches, though he had clapped his wig on his head—and ushered the Major firmly toward the door. MacDonald looked ludicrously surprised and not a little disgruntled at being given the push in this civilized fashion, he having quite obviously intended to stay and hear all the gory details. Still, there was no graceful way of resisting, and he made the best of it, bowing in a dignified manner as he took his leave.
The panic had begun to recede, as bafflingly as it had come. Jamie’s hands radiated a warmth that seemed to spread through my body, and my breath came easily again. I was able to focus my attention on my patient, who had got his eyes open, though he seemed to be regretting it.
“Och, mo cheann!” Duncan squinted against the glow of the lamp, focusing with some difficulty on my face, then rising to Jamie’s behind me. “Mac Dubh—what’s come amiss?”
One of Jamie’s hands left my shoulder, and reached down to tighten on Duncan’s arm.
“Dinna fash yourself, a charaid.” He glanced meaningfully at Jocasta. “Your wife is just about to tell us what has happened. Are ye not, Aunt?”
There was a slight but definite emphasis on the “not,” and Jocasta, thus put on the spot, pursed her lips, but then sighed and sat straight, plainly resigned to the unpleasant necessity of confidence.
“There is no one here but family?”
Being assured that there was not, she nodded, and began.
She had sent away her maid, and been on the point of retiring, she said, when the door from the hall had suddenly opened to admit what she thought were two men.
“I am sure there was more than one—I heard their footsteps, and breathing,” she said, frowning in concentration. “There might have been three, but I think not. Only one of them spoke, though. I think the other must have been someone I ken, for he stayed far away, quite at the end of the room, as though he were afraid I should recognize him by some means.”
The man who had spoken to her was a stranger; she was positive that she had never heard his voice before.
“He was an Irishman,” she said, and Jamie’s hand tightened abruptly on my shoulder. “Well enough spoken, but not a gentleman, by any means.” Her nostrils flared a little, with unconscious disdain.
“No, hardly that,” Jamie said, under his breath. Bree had started slightly at the word “Irishman,” though her face bore no more than a slight frown of concentration as she listened.
The Irishman had been polite, but blunt in his demands; he wanted the gold.
“Gold?” It was Duncan who spoke, but the question was plain on everyone’s face. “What gold? We’ve no money in the house save a few pounds sterling and a bit of the Proclamation money.”
Jocasta’s lips pressed tight. There was no help for it, though; not now. She made a small growling noise in her throat, an inarticulate protest at being compelled to give up the secret she had kept for so long.
“The Frenchman’s gold,” she said, abruptly.
“What?” said Duncan in bewilderment. He touched the lump behind his ear, gingerly, as though convinced it had affected his hearing.
“The French gold,” Jocasta repeated, rather irritably. “That was sent, just before Culloden.”
“Before—” Bree began, wide-eyed, but Jamie interrupted her.
“Louis’s gold,” he said softly. “That’s what ye mean, Aunt? The Stuarts’ gold?”
Jocasta uttered a short laugh, quite without humor.
“Once it was.”
She paused, listening. The voices had moved away from the door, though there were still noises in the hallway. She turned toward Bree, and motioned toward the door.
“Go and see that no one’s got his lug to the keyhole, lass. I havena held my peace these twenty-five years only to spill it to the whole county.”
Bree opened the door briefly, peered out, then closed it, reporting that no one was near.
“Good. Come ye here, lass. Sit by me. But no—first, fetch me the case I showed ye yesterday.”
Looking more than puzzled, Bree vanished into the dressing room, returning with a slender case of worn black leather. She laid it in Jocasta’s lap and settled onto a stool beside her aunt, giving me a look of faint concern.
I was feeling quite myself again, though a faint echo of that odd fear still rang in my bones. I nodded reassuringly to Bree, though, and bent to give Duncan a sip of watered brandy. I knew what it was now, that ancient distress. It was that phrase overheard, the words by chance the same that a small girl had once heard spoken, whispered in the next room by the strangers who had come to say her mother would not be coming back, that she had died. An accident; a crash; fire. Burnt to bones, the voice had said, filled with the awe of it. Burnt to bones, and the desolation of a daughter, forever abandoned. My hand trembled, and the cloudy liquid ran in a trickle down Duncan’s chin.
But that was long ago, and in another country, I thought, steeling myself against the riptide of memory.
And besides …
Jocasta drained her own cup, set it down with a small thump, and opened the case in her lap. A gleam of gold and diamonds showed inside, and she lifted out a slender wooden rod that held three rings.
“I had three daughters, once,” she said. “Three girls. Clementina, Seonag, and Morna.” She touched one of the rings, a wide band, set with three large diamonds.
“This was for my girls; Hector gave it to me when Morna was born. She was his, Morna—you know it means ‘beloved’?” Her other hand left the box and stretched out, groping. She touched Bree’s cheek, and Bree took the hand, cradling it between her own.
“I had one living child of each marriage.” Jocasta’s long fingers probed delicately, touching each ring in turn. “Clementina belonged to John Cameron; him I wed when I myself was little more than a child; I bore her at sixteen. Seonag was the daughter of Black Hugh—she was dark, like her sire, but she had my brother Colum’s eyes.” She turned her own blind eyes toward Jamie, briefly, then bent her head back, touching the ring with three diamonds again.
“And then Morna, my last child. She was but sixteen when she died.”
The old woman’s face was bleak, but the line of her mouth softened, speaking the names of her vanished girls.
“I’m sorry, Aunt.” Bree spoke softly. She bent her head to kiss the knuckles of the hand she cradled, knobbed with age. Jocasta tightened her hand a little in acknowledgment, but did not mean to be distracted from her story.
“Hector Cameron gave me this,” Jocasta said, touching the ring. “And he killed them all. My
children, my daughters. He killed them for the Frenchman’s gold.”
The shock of it took my breath and hollowed my stomach. I felt Jamie go still behind me, and saw Duncan’s bloodshot eyes go wide. Brianna didn’t change expression. She closed her eyes for a moment, but still held on to the long bony hand.
“What happened to them, Aunt?” she said quietly. “Tell me.”
Jocasta was silent for a few moments. So was the room; there was no sound save the hiss of beeswax burning, and the faint asthmatic wheeze of her breath. To my surprise, when she spoke again, it wasn’t to Brianna. Instead, she lifted her head and turned again toward Jamie.
“You know about the gold, then, a mhic mo pheathar?” she said. If he found this a strange question, he gave no sign of it, but answered calmly.
“I have heard something of it,” he said. He moved, coming round the bed to sit beside me, closer to his aunt. “It has been a rumor in the Highlands, ever since Culloden. Louis would send gold, they said, to help his cousin in his holy fight. And then they said the gold had come, yet no man saw it.”
“I saw it.” Jocasta’s wide mouth, so like her nephew’s, widened further in a sudden grimace, then relaxed. “I saw it,” she repeated.
“Thirty thousand pound, in gold bullion. I was with them the night it came ashore, rowed in from the French ship. It was in six small chests, each one so heavy that only two at a time could be brought, else the boat would sink. Each chest had the fleur-de-lis carved on the lid, each one bound with iron bands and a lock, each lock itself sealed with red wax, and the wax bore the print of King Louis’s ring. The fleur-de-lis.”
A sigh ran through us all at the words, a collective breath of awe. Jocasta nodded slowly, blind eyes open to the sights of that night long past.
“Where was it brought ashore, Aunt?” Jamie asked softly.
She nodded slowly, as though to herself, eyes fixed on the scene her memory painted.
“On Innismaraich,” she said. “A tiny isle, just off Coigach.”
I had been holding my breath. Now I let it out, slowly, and met Jamie’s eyes. Innismaraich. Island of the Sea-people; the silkies’ isle, it meant. We knew that place.
“There were the three men trusted with it,” she said. “Hector was one, my brother Dougal was another—the third man was masked; they all were, but of course I kent Hector and Dougal. I didna ken the third man, nor did any of them speak his name. I knew his servant, though; a man named Duncan Kerr.”
Jamie had stiffened slightly at Dougal’s name; at the name of Duncan Kerr he froze.
“There were servants, too?” he asked.
“Two,” she said, and a faint, bitter smile twisted her mouth. “The masked man brought Duncan Kerr, as I said, and my brother Dougal had a man with him from Leoch—I kent his face, but not his name. Hector had me to help him; I was a braw, strong woman—like you, a leannan, like you,” she said softly, squeezing Brianna’s hand. “I was strong, and Hector trusted me as he could trust no other. I trusted him, too—then.”
The noises from outside had died away, but a breeze through the broken pane stirred the curtains, uneasy as a ghost that hears its name called from a distance.
“There were three boats. The chests were small, but heavy enough that it took two persons to carry one between them. We took two chests into our boat, Hector and I, and we rowed away, into the fog. I could hear the splash of the others’ oars, growing fainter as they drew away, and then lost in the night.”
“When was this, Aunt?” Jamie asked, his eyes intent on her. “When did the gold come from France?”
“Too late,” she whispered. “Much too late. Damn Louis!” she exclaimed, with a sudden fierceness that brought her upright in her seat. “Damn the wicked Frenchman, and may his eyes rot as mine have! To think what might have been, had he been true to his blood and his word!”
Jamie’s eyes met mine, sidelong. Too late. Had the gold come sooner—when Charles landed at Glenfinnan, perhaps, or when he took Edinburgh, and for a few brief weeks held the city as a king returned—what then?
The ghost of a smile touched Jamie’s lips with ruefulness, and he glanced at Brianna, then back at me, the question asked and answered in his eyes. What, then?
“It was March,” Jocasta said, recovering from her outburst. “A freezing night, but clear as ice. I stood upon the cliff and looked far out to sea, and the path of the moon lay like gold on the water. The ship came sailing in upon that golden path, like a king to his coronation, and I did think it a sign.” Her head turned toward Jamie, and her mouth twisted abruptly.
“I did think I heard him laughing, then,” she said. “Black Brian. Him who took my sister from me. It would have been like him. But he was not there; I suppose it was only the barking of the silkies.”
I was watching Jamie as she spoke. He didn’t move, but like magic, the reddish hairs on his forearm rose, glinting like wires in the candlelight.
“I didna ken ye knew my father,” he said, a faint edge to his voice. “But let that be for now, Aunt. It was March, ye say?”
She nodded.
“Too late,” she repeated. “It was meant to have come two months before, Hector said. There were delays …”
It had been too late. In January, after the victory at Falkirk, such a show of support from France might have been decisive. But in March, the Highland Army was already moving north, turned back at Derby from its invasion of England. The last slim chance of victory had been lost, and Charles Stuart’s men were marching then toward destruction at Culloden.
With the chests safe ashore, the new guardians of the gold had conferred over what to do with the treasure. The army was moving, and Stuart with it; Edinburgh was once more in the hands of the English. There was no safe place to take it, no trustworthy hands into which it could be delivered.
“They didna trust O’Sullivan or the others near the Prince,” Jocasta explained. “Irishmen, Italians … Dougal said he hadna gone to so much trouble, only to have the gold squandered or stolen by foreigners.” She smiled, a little grimly. “He meant he didna want to chance losing the credit for having got it.”
The three keepers had been no more willing to trust one another than the Prince’s advisers. Most of the night had been spent in argument in the bleak upper room of a desolate tavern, while Jocasta and the two servants slept on the floor, among the red-sealed chests. Finally, the gold had been divided; each man had taken two of the chests, swearing on his blood to keep the secret and hold the treasure faithfully, in trust for his rightful monarch, King James.
“They made the two servants swear as well,” Jocasta said. “They cut each man, and the drops of blood shone redder in the candlelight than the wax seals on the chests.”
“Did you swear, too?” Brianna spoke quietly, but her eyes were intent on the white-haired figure in the chair.
“No, I didna swear.” Jocasta’s lips, still finely shaped, curved slightly, as though amused. “I was Hector’s wife; his oath bound me. Then.”
Uneasy in possession of so much wealth, the conspirators had left the tavern before dawn, bundling the chests in blankets and rags to hide them.
“A pair of travelers rode in, as the last of the chests was brought down. It was their coming that saved the innkeeper’s life, for it was a lonely spot, and he the only witness to our presence there that night. I think Dougal and Hector would not have thought to do such a thing—but the third man, he meant to dispose of the landlord; I saw it in his eyes, in the crouch of his body as he waited near the bottom of the stair, his hand on his dirk. He saw me watching—he smiled at me, beneath his mask.”
“And did he never unmask, this third man?” Jamie asked. His ruddy brows drew together as though by sheer concentration he could recreate the scene she saw in her mind’s eye, and identify the stranger.
She shook her head.
“No. I asked myself, now and then, when I thought of that night, would I know the man again, did I see him. I thought I would; he was
dark, a slender man, but with a strength in him like knife steel. Could I see his eyes again, I would be sure of it. But now …” She shrugged. “Would I ken him by his voice alone? I canna say, so long ago it was.”
“But he wasna by any means an Irishman, this man?” Duncan was still pale and clammy-looking, but had raised himself on one elbow, listening with deep absorption.
Jocasta started a little, as though she had forgotten his presence.
“Ah! No, a dhuine. A Scot by his speech—a Highland gentleman.”
Duncan and Jamie exchanged glances.
“A MacKenzie or a Cameron?” Duncan asked softly, and Jamie nodded.
“Or perhaps one of the Grants.”
I understood their half-voiced speculations. There were—had been—a staggeringly complex array of associations and feuds among the Highland clans, and there were many who would not—could not—have cooperated in an undertaking of such importance and secrecy.
Colum MacKenzie had negotiated a close alliance with the Camerons; in fact, Jocasta herself had been part of that alliance, her marriage to a Cameron chief the token of it. If Dougal MacKenzie was one of the men who had engineered the receipt of the French gold, and Hector Cameron another, it was odds-on that the third man had been someone from one of those clans, or from another trusted by both. MacKenzie, Cameron … or Grant. And if Jocasta had not known the man by sight, the odds on his being a Grant improved, for she would have known most high-ranking tacksmen of clans MacKenzie or Cameron.
But there was no time now to consider such things; the story was not finished.
The conspirators had separated then, each going by his own way, each with one-third of the French gold. Jocasta had no knowledge of what Dougal MacKenzie or the unknown man had done with their chests; Hector Cameron had put the two chests he brought away into a hole in the floor of his bedroom, an old hiding place made by his father to conceal valuables.
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